Sal Essajee successfully defends PhD dissertation
Sal Essajee completed his PhD in Integrative Physiology under the mentorship of Dr. Johnathan Tune, defending his dissertation entitled “The Gordian Knot of Myocardial Perfusion: Disentangling the Complex Interplay Between Coronary Flow, Metabolism and Contractile Function.”
Essajee’s research focused on understanding how the heart matches coronary blood flow to metabolism and function, challenging the current paradigm of supply-demand balance, which asserts that any imbalances between blood flow and metabolism, leads to ischemia and adverse cardiovascular outcomes. His results provide evidence for a perfusion-contraction-metabolism matching paradigm, such that under conditions where coronary blood flow is impaired, the heart reduces its functional and metabolic capacity, arguing against the possibility for there to be a supply-demand “imbalance”. The research team also observed, that in conditions such as heart failure with underlying microvascular dysfunction, the heart still adheres to the perfusion-contraction-metabolism matching paradigm. The results from the studies highlight the need for future experiments that quantify these parameters together, in order to better understand the mechanism by which the heart begins to fail.
After graduation, Essajee will begin a postdoctoral fellow position at UT Southwestern Medical Center, studying heart failure in human patients under the mentorship of Drs. Benjamin Levine and Satyam “Tom” Sarma.